INDIANAPOLIS — If you grew up in Paterson or had interest in playing for Paterson Catholic, you played basketball. That's just the way it was. You would play for Jimmy Salmons' AAU team, the Playaz. Then you would go on to play for Damon Wright's Cougars team. Every kid did this. And if you were part of that neatly woven hoops fabric, you knew players you didn't even play with. That's just the way it was.

So when Jordan Theodore was in sixth grade, he would always find himself hanging around the city's courts, waiting for pick-up games on the playgrounds. He was testing himself for bigger and better things. There was a kid though, three years older than he was, who was the talk of the courts.

It was Victor Cruz.

Yes, that Victor Cruz.

"Just being around Paterson Catholic, I remember going there and watching the games and seeing Vic play," Theodore recalled this week. "He was a very talented basketball player. He could dribble, he could shoot. He had some hops, man. He could jump. He played defense, too. He was a real team player."

This season, the Paterson-born Cruz has become the talk of the NFL. He has spear-headed a rejuvenated Giants offense, setting a new mark for single-season receiving yards. His salsa dance after touchdowns has become such a hot topic that even Madonna mimicked him during a press conference this week in Indianapolis. But before Cruz became a superstar on the football field, he was best known for what he could do on the basketball court.

He grew up and played against many of the state's best college basketball players, playing shooting guard. In addition to Theodore and Fuquan Edwin at Seton Hall, he calls Rutgers point guard Myles Mack his "little brother."

"Those guys are like my little brothers," Cruz said recently. "Anytime I get to call them or speak to them. And they call me anytime they have a question or want to talk or want to play FIFA (Soccer video game). We just kind of hang out and talk all the time. And it's good for them to have somebody like me, who's kind of been through the same road and the same obstacles that they may face."

When Seton Hall beat Connecticut on Jan. 3, Cruz sat courtside at the Prudential Center to cheer on his close friends. Afterwards, he spent time in the Pirates' locker room speaking to the rest of the team.

Theodore said a number of his teammates were a little awed that an NFL star would grace them with his presence during the season, but the senior point guard said that Cruz was as down-to-Earth as they come.

"He was ahead of me (at Paterson Catholic), so we never played together, but we would always practice," Theodore said. "But he deserves this. He worked hard at UMass. Last year, he came on the scene in the preseason game (against the Jets) and scored three touchdowns in the Giants' win. From there, people would always say, 'Oh, this guy's a player.'"

Numerous times during this Super Bowl week, Cruz has spoken glowingly about his former high school. While Paterson Catholic closed its doors in 2010 for good because of financial problems, Cruz still carried the PC tradition.

"The camaraderie, the people there, the coaching staff, how much of a family-oriented place it was," Cruz said. "It was like a family. Those guys that I met in high school, we would talk and spend a lot of time off the field doing things. We would go to parties, we would just hang out, have sleepovers. It was just one of those things where it was a second home for me."

Those that played against Cruz on the basketball courts and gyms of Paterson, say that the happy-go-lucky wide receiver was a better basketball player than football player.

But even back then, there was no doubting which sport he would pursue.

"Football was always his first love though," Theodore said. "At Paterson Catholic, we always had guys that played football and basketball for the school. It was like tradition: If you played football, you played basketball."